[SOLVED] nVidia 173.14.39 Driver on Slackware 14.2

Erik_FL · 09-15-2016, 06:48 PM

I'm trying to get Slackware 14.2 working with either the nVidia 173.14.39 driver or the Nouveau driver. My graphics card is identified as follows.

01:00.0 VGA Compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation NV35 [GeForce FX 5900 Ultra] (rev a1)

Can anyone suggest a version of the nVidia driver known to be compatible with Slackware 14.2? Can anyone suggest settings for the Nouveau driver that would make simple 2D graphics faster in KDE and XFCE?

The nVidia driver download site gives me this driver to download.
NVIDIA-Linux-x86-173.14.39-pkg1.run

The driver works fine on Slackware 14.1 but I can't remember if I had to apply patches. The driver does not compile on Slackware 14.2, which is a known problem.
http://www.flaterco.com/kb/video/X-regressions.html

I did not completely understand the instructions on the linked page, nor can I locate all the mentioned patches. It appears complicated, and I'm wondering if it's worth the trouble.

If I understand correctly, there are graphics libraries included with the driver that are not compatible with the current version of X Windows.

My alternative is the Nouveau driver. I have gotten it to work, but the performance (even with XFCE) is really awful. I'm wondering if I need to change or create some settings. I have none of the KDE effects enabled and the screen painting and window updates are still quite slow (1 second to draw wallpaper).

I used the "X -configure" command to configure X Windows for Nouveau.

Here is my /etc/X11/xorg.conf file.

Code:

Section "ServerLayout"
	Identifier     "X.org Configured"
	Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
	InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
	InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "Files"
	ModulePath   "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/local"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/TTF"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/OTF"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/Type1"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/misc"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/CID"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/cyrillic"
EndSection

Section "Module"
	Load  "glx"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier  "Keyboard0"
	Driver      "kbd"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier  "Mouse0"
	Driver      "mouse"
	Option	    "Protocol" "auto"
	Option	    "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
	Option	    "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 6 7"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
	#DisplaySize	  340   270	# mm
	Identifier   "Monitor0"
	VendorName   "DEL"
	ModelName    "DELL E176FP"
	HorizSync    31.0 - 80.0
	VertRefresh  56.0 - 75.0
	Option	    "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
        ### Available Driver options are:-
        ### Values: <i>: integer, <f>: float, <bool>: "True"/"False",
        ### <string>: "String", <freq>: "<f> Hz/kHz/MHz",
        ### <percent>: "<f>%"
        ### [arg]: arg optional
        #Option     "SWcursor"           	# [<bool>]
        #Option     "HWcursor"           	# [<bool>]
        #Option     "NoAccel"            	# [<bool>]
        #Option     "ShadowFB"           	# [<bool>]
        #Option     "UseFBDev"           	# [<bool>]
        #Option     "Rotate"             	# [<str>]
        #Option     "VideoKey"           	# <i>
        #Option     "FlatPanel"          	# [<bool>]
        #Option     "FPDither"           	# [<bool>]
        #Option     "CrtcNumber"         	# <i>
        #Option     "FPScale"            	# [<bool>]
        #Option     "FPTweak"            	# <i>
        #Option     "DualHead"           	# [<bool>]
	Identifier  "Card0"
	Driver      "nv"
	BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "Screen0"
	Device     "Card0"
	Monitor    "Monitor0"
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     1
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     4
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     8
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     15
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     16
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     24
	EndSubSection
EndSection

Here are some further details about the computer.

Motherboard Asus P4C800E Deluxe
Pentium 4, 3.2 Ghz. Single Core + Hyperthreading
RAM 2GB DDR400
Disk RAID 0 on Promise FastTrack 374 - 75 GB ext4
nVidia GeForce FX 5900 Ultra in an AGP slot
Monitor, DELL 15 inch flat panel LCD.
PCI backplane slots
- 3Com Dialup Modem
- SoundBlaster AWE32 Sound Card
- LSI Logic SCSI with DAT2 drive attached

I installed all Slackware packages, uninstalled GRUB 2 and installed Legacy Grub 0.97. I installed the "dmraid" software and boot using an "initrd" with "dmraid" included. The disk drivers and device mapper driver are the standard ones in Slackware 14.2. Disk access does seem to further slow Nouveau but had no effect with the nVidia driver on Slackware 14.1.

My other operating system on the same machine is Windows XP Pro. That updates the display relatively quickly and is probably using graphics acceleration. CPU intensive programs don't run very fast but the performance is tolerable.

Mostly I expect to use the machine for a file server and to copy some old DAT backup tapes. I don't really need Linux on it, but it was handy. Now that the nVidia graphics card is unsupported, I'm wondering if I would do better using the on-board Intel graphics. Or is the support for that even worse than nVidia?

My other option is to revert to Slackware 14.1 or earlier. To be honest, Slackware 12 was the last release to really outperform Windows XP Pro on the machine.

Suggestions to improve GUI performance will be appreciated.

Emerson · 09-15-2016, 06:58 PM

Remove your xorg.conf and try without, if it is still slow passtebin your Xorg log and give us the link.

bassmadrigal · 09-15-2016, 07:12 PM

Based on this post, the nvidia 173 driver won't work on 14.2.

I think you're stuck with nouveau or going back to 14.1. But some users might be able to give you tweaking options to get some better performance out of it (I don't use nvidia cards, so I'm not familiar enough with it).

kingbeowulf · 09-17-2016, 03:44 AM

Nvidia has dropped support for FX 5xxx series GPUs. There are no new drivers.
Newest driver is 173.14.39 for X.Org server 1.15 or older.
nv is NOT nouveau, but much older and deprecated. remove it from xorg.conf. Put in 'nouveau' instead.
make sure you installed xf86-video-nouveau
review the feature matrix https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/FeatureMatrix/
run 'glxinfo' and look for 'direct rendering: Yes'

You will need to run an older Slackware or use Nouveau. make you remove "/etc/modprobe.d/BLACKLIST-nouveau.conf" if you installed it to run the Nvidia drivers. You may not need an xorg.conf - unless your monitor/kb/mouse is goofy. X should autodetect your GPU and load nouveau automatically. Try it. You can then fine tune with 'xrandr'

Erik_FL · 09-19-2016, 04:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kingbeowulf

[LIST=1]
nv is NOT nouveau, but much older and deprecated. remove it from xorg.conf. Put in 'nouveau' instead.

Thanks, I didn't realize that the "nv" driver was not "nouveau". With no xorg.conf file the performance is much slower than using the "nv" driver. Also, with no xorg.conf file the monitor refresh rate displays as "0.0" in kde and the screen position is skewed to the right a half inch or so.

I noticed that "xorgsetup" does not create an xorg.conf file but "X -configure" does. Also "xorgsetup" displays an error about not being able to execute "askreboot" or something similar. I could not find the "xorgconfig" program that I am used to using on Slackware.

I will make sure that I'm using the "nouveau" driver and check the log file for errors. I remember using "xrandr" to adjust text console resolution on a different computer. The problem may be my monitor's screen parameters. I believe that I can create a separate config file for that now instead of using "xorg.conf".

Emerson · 09-19-2016, 05:29 PM

You need KMS in kernel for open source drivers, and X -configure will not work when KMS is loaded. You need xorg.conf only if there is something you want to fine tune.

Erik_FL · 09-19-2016, 08:32 PM

I got the Nouveau driver working by editing "xorg.conf". Once I did that, the graphics was much faster and the monitor was at the correct refresh rate. I haven't tried without "xorg.conf" yet. I'm going to mark this as solved. Thanks for all the help and suggestions.